tirsdag den 10. februar 2009

The worst recession in 100 years

Britain is facing its worst financial crisis for more than a century, surpassing even the Great Depression of the 1930s, one of Gordon Brown's most senior ministers and confidants has admitted.

In an extraordinary admission about the severity of the economic downturn, Ed Balls even predicted that its effects would still be felt 15 years from now. The Schools Secretary's comments carry added weight because he is a former chief economic adviser to the Treasury and regarded as one of the Prime Ministers's closest allies.

Mr Balls said yesterday: "The reality is that this is becoming the most serious global recession for, I'm sure, over 100 years, as it will turn out."

He warned that events worldwide were moving at a "speed, pace and ferocity which none of us have seen before" and banks were losing cash on a "scale that nobody believed possible".

The minister stunned his audience at a Labour conference in Yorkshire by forecasting that times could be tougher than in the depression of the 1930s, when male unemployment in some cities reached 70 per cent. He also appeared to hint that the recession could play into the hands of the far right.

"The economy is going to define our politics in this region and in Britain in the next year, the next five years, the next 10 and even the next 15 years," Mr Balls said. "These are seismic events that are going to change the political landscape. I think this is a financial crisis more extreme and more serious than that of the 1930s, and we all remember how the politics of that era were shaped by the economy."

Philip Hammond, the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said Mr Balls's predictions were "a staggering and very worrying admission from a cabinet minister and Gordon Brown's closest ally in the Treasury over the past 10 years". He added: "We are being told that not only are we facing the worst recession in 100 years, but that it will last for over a decade – far longer than Treasury forecasts predict."

It should be remarked that the forecast is just that. It certainly is a plain admission that the politicians do not control the capitalist system; the "no return to boom and bust" of Labour must sound like a bad joke to everyone now.

What is worrying is the political perspective: a rise in the far-right in tact with worsening conditions for the working class. (For it is the latter, as always, who face the privations of unemployment and poverty.) This mechanistic rise in far-right support need not be the outcome, this could lead to a rediscovery of socialist ideas by the working class, although we as socialists would be burying our heads in the sand if we didn't pay attention to the electoral succeses of organisations like the BNP.

Balls words certainly leave the reader with a feeling: a storm is brewing.